Image by Ed Yourdon
I took this photo on Broadway and 89th Street, where this elderly woman was sitting on one of the "Broadway Malls" benches between the uptown and downtown sides of Broadway.

The basic scene doesn’t require any explanation, though I was happy to see that the dog was providing such pleasure to an elderly woman. But what struck me most was her clothing: perhaps her scarf was mundane, and maybe her shoes, too, but look at the rest of her attire: her dark-blue pants-suit was clean and pressed, and I doubt that even Hillary Clinton would have looked so good in such an outfit.

Notice also the small portion of a cane on the lower-left portion of the picture. I didn’t hang around long enough to tell, but it looks to me like the cane of a blind person. I could be wrong, of course, but I wonder if part of this dog’s job was to help guide woman to and from her home, here on the Upper West Side of Manhattan…

Moving into 2013, the photo was published in an undated (early Mar 2013) Squidoo blog titled "Old Age Problems."

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This is part of an evolving photo-project, which will probably continue throughout the summer of 2008, and perhaps beyond: a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan — between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

I don’t like to intrude on people’s privacy, so I normally use a telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they’re still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what’s right in front of me.

I’ve also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting — literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I’ve learned to keep the camera switched on (which contradicts my traditional urge to conserve battery power), and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture … after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it’s pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject.

For the most part, I’ve deliberately avoided photographing bums, drunks, drunks, and crazy people. There are a few of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don’t want to be photographed, and I don’t want to feel like I’m taking advantage of them. I’m still looking for opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. We’ll see how it goes …

The only other thing I’ve noticed, thus far, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, *far* more people who are *not* so interesting. They’re probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I’ve photographed … but there was just nothing memorable about them.

Image by cesarharada.comwww.ted.com/pages/view/id/394
Meet the TED2010 Fellows!
The TED2010 Fellows will join the TED community in Long Beach for a Fellows pre-conference and for TED2010: "What the World Needs Now." Check back soon to read their complete bios! Learn how to become a TED Fellow too »

Mubarak Abdullahi (Nigeria/UK) – Aircraft engineer who at 24 built a homemade helicopter out of old car and bike parts
Milena Boniolo (Brazil) – Chemist and PhD student at Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil studying emerging contaminants

Perry Chen (US) – Co-founder and CEO of Kickstarter, a web platform offering people a new way to fund their creative ideas and endeavors

Anita Doron (Ukraine/Canada) – Surrealist filmmaker and documentarian

Ndubuisi Ekekwe (Nigeria/US) – Scientist and founder of the African Institution of Technology, an organization seeking to establish integrated chip design and manufacturing facilities across the African continent

Saeed Taji Farouky (Palestine/UK) – Documentary filmmaker, photographer, and writer focusing on human rights in the Middle East and North Africa

Jessica Green (US) – Professor at the University of Oregon’s Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology whose research is focuses on microbial diversity

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (Pakistan/US) – Documentary filmmaker and founder of The Citizens Archive of Pakistan, an educational institution and heritage centre established working to preserve Pakistan’s history